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Blackmon: For better or worse, Scott Stricklin’s fate is in Billy Napier’s hands
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Scott Stricklin has made his choice. The Florida athletic director is sticking with embattled football coach Billy Napier for the 2025 season.
Sticking with Napier, who is 15-19 in just under 3 years at Florida, is a bold choice. Plenty of Florida fans have used other words to describe it. It’s the kind of decision that men and women like Stricklin are well-compensated to make.
It also might end up being the last consequential decision Stricklin gets to make as Florida’s athletic director.
Outside of asking the man himself, there’s no way to know whether the 54-year-old Stricklin is so confident in Napier’s future success at Florida that he’s willing to stake his career at Florida on Napier figuring it out and becoming the coach Florida thought they hired nearly 3 years ago in December 2021.
Make no mistake, though, staking his future at Florida on Napier’s success in 2025 and beyond is precisely what Stricklin seems to have done.
Whatever happens next, Stricklin and Napier are married at the hip.
Will Stricklin be validated, or will his faith in the 45-year-old Napier, who was 40-12 and won 2 conference championships at Louisiana and turned down the Auburn and South Carolina jobs before being hired by Florida, be rewarded?
There’s no question retaining Napier required a leap of faith from Stricklin, who had little to hang his hat on from a results standpoint.
Yes, until Saturday’s wipeout loss at Texas, the Gators appeared to be improving in all respects, buoyed by the fabulous play of freshman phenom quarterback DJ Lagway, who was injured early in the Georgia game while the Gators held a lead and appeared firmly in control.
But in handing Napier a 4th season, Stricklin is undoubtedly trusting and rewarding the eye-test of an improving young team over wins and losses.
Florida, after all, still lost rivalry games to Miami, at Tennessee and to Georgia.
There might be participation ribbons in some aspects of life, but not in the cutthroat world of SEC football. There are wins and there are losses, and Florida earns little prestige by losing close games to the Vols and Bulldogs.
At Florida, a place with 11 SEC championships and 3 claimed national championships, should a coach get a 4th year based on vibes and moral victories?
Stricklin’s letter explaining the choice cited Florida’s effort and the need for “a disciplined, stable approach that is focused on long-term, sustained success for Gator athletes, recruits and fans,” but what evidence of long-term sustained success exists at present, either on or off the field?
On the field, the Gators are 4-5 with 2 games against ranked opponents remaining.
If Florida fails to win at least 1 of those games, they will miss a bowl game for the 2nd time under Napier and suffer a 4th consecutive losing season for the first time in the modern era (post-integration) of college football.
Off the field, recruiting is a tire fire, with the Gators poised to ink their worst signing class in decades, currently ranked 45th in the 247 composite rankings. Bringing Napier back may offer a modicum of stability, and certainly seems to assure Lagway’s return, a huge deal by any objective measure.
But is Lagway enough? The answer might depend on what talent Napier brings in as Florida makes good on promises, first reported here at SDS, to spend as much as $13M this offseason in the transfer portal and NIL investments now that a decision on the coach’s fate has been made. Further, given Napier has received financial and administrative support from the University of Florida never offered to a head coach before, will he coach well enough to deliver with even more investment and financial support?
Stricklin seems willing to bet his future as Florida’s athletic director on the answer to these questions being “yes.”
Stricklin, a masterful fundraiser, has improved Florida’s infrastructure to succeed in sports across the board, overseeing the financing and construction of a host of new facilities, including a beautiful baseball stadium and state of the art football facility. He’s also offered stability to the athletic department at a time of flux for UF, which has an interim president serving after Ben Sasse resigned mired in scandal earlier this year. Florida also lacks permanent deans at the law and medical schools, 2 of the school’s 3 largest alumni contribution bases from a financial standpoint. The leadership vacuum has made Stricklin’s steady fundraising hand especially valuable.
But Stricklin has had little luck with hiring coaches at a place where championships are an expectation.
Florida’s best head coaches, from iconic track coach Mouse Holloway to Jenny Rowland, the leader of the powerhouse gymnastics program and Kevin O’Sullivan, arguably the nation’s best baseball coach, are all holdover hires from the championship-filled Jeremy Foley era.
Stricklin inherited those coaches and has done well to keep them, but has hired no real championship caliber coach of his own.
The closest such figure, men’s basketball coach Todd Golden, should be basking in having a SEC title contender in just his third year on campus. Instead, Golden is coaching through uncertainty as a respondent in a Title IX investigation for sexual misconduct.
The allegations are unproven, and due process must play itself out, but it is not lost on many Gators fans that this is the 3rd coach hired by Stricklin facing accusations or allegations of misconduct toward women.
This is the SEC, though, and a great football coach can cure all that ails an athletic program.
Stricklin, facing down adversity with an alligator’s grin, has staked his future on Napier.
History is filled with men and women of consequence making enormous decisions.
Washington and a tired, freezing army crossing the Delaware.
Rosa Parks refusing to get up on a Montgomery bus.
Churchill declining to surrender during the London Blitz.
Okay, okay, okay.
This is “just SEC football.” But it just means more, right? And in our sport, there are also consequential decisions and inflection points.
Whatever Mal Moore said to Nick Saban after Saban promised he would not be the Alabama coach during that sport-altering 38-day search.
Urban Meyer’s decision to spend more time with his family in 2010 and Foley’s confidence and belief that Will Muschamp, then the coach-in-waiting at Texas, was ready to compete with the likes of Saban at Alabama.
Danny White trusting his gut and hiring Josh Heupel in January 2021 after the Jeremy Pruitt fiasco ended at Tennessee.
Big decisions. Big consequences.
Add Scott Stricklin keeping Billy Napier to the list.
If Napier fails, add a new athletic director to the list of things Florida might need in 2025, too.
Neil Blackmon covers Florida football and the SEC for SaturdayDownSouth.com. An attorney, he is also a member of the Football and Basketball Writers Associations of America. He also coaches basketball.
